2. This vegetarian crocodilian.

Julius Csotonyi, illustrator and scientist, told BuzzFeed: “Crocodilians have a far more diverse history than their few living representatives suggest. Not all were carnivores, as the herbivorous and armored Desmatosuchus from the Triassic illustrates.”

3. This guy who had legs with digits instead of fins, but still swam underwater rather than walked on land.

Acanthostega lived during the Devonian period, when vertebrates began to move on to land from the water. Csotonyi says: “Although Acanthostega possessed legs with digits instead of fins, its anatomy was still better evolved for life in the water, using its legs for clambering about in its aquatic environment.”

5. A sabre-toothed hippo relative who probably chased around early horse relatives.

“The Oligocene was a weird time in mammalian history, when 6-foot-tall sabre-toothed hippo relatives called entelodonts such as Archaeotherium may have chased down diminutive early multi-toed horses such as Mesohippus,” Csotonyi says.

7. These moose-like creatures.

The Permian Period hosted a plethora of bizarre-looking mammal relatives called Dinocephalians. “The horn-like skull projections of Estemmenosuchus mirabilis made it look vaguely moose-like; its massive canines, not so much,” Csotonyi says.

9. This one-fingered dinosaur (if you can call that a finger).

10. This fabulously feathered dinosaur.

This was the first feathered non-avian dinosaur from the Western hemisphere that was discovered. According to Csotonyi it was a “flightless speed-demon”. Its feathers were probably used for showing off.

11. Our ancestors, who looked like this 4 million years ago.

Ardipithecus ramidus is currently the oldest known bipedal hominin (early humans and their relatives). Csotonyi says: “I put a lot of myself into this digital painting – literally; I used my own (heavily remastered) photos for visual reference of ape anatomy.”

12. Oh, and this giant shark about to attack a swimming elephantid.

Until about 1.5 million years ago, really, really big sharks called C. megalodon prowled the oceans, representing one of the largest vertebrate predators ever. “This restoration depicts a very unusual interaction between one of these typically open-ocean giants and a medium-sized shovel-tusked elephantid [Platybelodon] having a very bad day,” says Csotonyi.